A Certain Age

Holly Golightly takes a fall. Florence Collins is 32 and desperate to marry a rich man. Despite making only $26,000 at Quayle’s auction house, she lives far beyond her means in order to abide by the New York City social ideals of the people she hangs out with. In the process, she sleeps with her friend’s husband, falls asleep on the beach when her friend’s daughter nearly drowns (and later dies), loses her job, gets a marriage proposal (she turns him down because he’s not her social ideal--but later it turns out he’s rich), is hooked on crack, evicted from her apartment, and loses $25,000 on a so-called investment.

I don't often dislike a book to the extent that I disliked this book. My wife and I often read books together, to each other, and we both hated this one. The female protagonist is appropriately depicted on the cover, because it seems as though every single situation in which she encounters a male in the book, she ends up on her back! Who wants to read about a woman like that? She lets every person in her life take advantage of her, and seems singularly clueless about all of it … and it's not at all funny! I can possibly -- remotely possibly -- imagine drawing up a situation like this, with a character like this, where the plot unfolds as funny … but on reflection I think it would still just be sad and pathetic, like this novel was. show more I can understand why so many readers were unable to finish it. What I can't understand is how anyone actually enjoyed it! (And in retrospect it's hard to believe we actually finished it ourselves…!) show less

Basically a retelling of Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, done for today, Bret Easton Ellis-style. Satirically depressing!

Florence ist nicht mehr ganz jung, aber noch äußerst attraktiv. Sie lebt in New York und ihr einziges Ziel ist es, reich zu heiraten. Jeder Cent wird für Körper- und Imagepflege ausgegeben, jede Gehirnwindung dem Nachdenken über Männer geopfert. Echte und authentische Menschen werden nicht erst genommen und fallen eher lästig. Das Buch ist also wie "Sex and the City", nur ohne Freundlichkeit oder positive Darstellung.
Das kann man lesen und das ist auch nicht unspannend.